Voters for school board chose Jen Corn, a former Berkeley teacher, and Ana Vasudeo, the board’s current president, for the two open seats. Credit: Maize Cline and Lawrence SuJen Corn, a political newcomer and former Berkeley teacher and principal, and Ana Vasudeo, an incumbent first elected four years ago, have declared victory in the race for two seats on Berkeley’s five-member school board.
After a new batch of votes were released Wednesday by Alameda County, Corn had the support of 36% of voters and Vasudeo 30%, with Laura Babitt trailing in third with 26%.
Corn, now the Director of School Improvement at Oakland Unified, outspent the other candidates in the race and, in addition to Vasudeo, was endorsed by the Berkeley Federation of Teachers.
Babitt’s failure to secure an endorsement from the powerful teachers union, as she did in 2020, may be decisive. While Babitt was endorsed by nearly every member of the Berkeley City Council, the union’s endorsement has gone to the winners in at least the last nine school board elections.
Babitt has yet to concede and declined to comment for this story.
Corn thanked her supporters for their dedicated work knocking on doors, putting up yard signs, talking to neighbors, donating money, hosting house parties, and, most importantly, voting.
“The support of our educator unions made a huge difference to my campaign, and I am humbled by our educators’ enthusiastic support of my candidacy,” she said.
Berkeley Federation of Teachers President Matt Meyers said that his union was thrilled with the results of this school board’s election.
“Both Ana and Jen are both currently BUSD parents who support and appreciate our work and treat educators as professionals,” he said. “They have the right skills set to bring stakeholders together, and we believe that it is going to be a great four years working with them to serve our students.”
The school board will be tasked with leading BUSD through a financial crisis as COVID-19 relief money runs out and state funding remains stagnant. In May, the board voted 3-2 to approve layoffs of roughly 20 district employees. Babitt was among those approving the layoffs; Vasudeo, who is board president, voted against them.
Vasudeo’s goals include “closing the opportunity gap for our most vulnerable learners, who include our Black and brown students and students with disabilities,” she wrote in a Berkeleyside candidate questionnaire.
Corn said equity — specifically “accelerating the achievement of students of color, students with disabilities, and students learning English” — was a top campaign priority.
Both Corn and Vasudeo emphasized the importance of protecting the district’s most vulnerable populations, particularly its undocumented, LGBTQ and transgender youth, in light of the recent reelection of Donald Trump, who has promised mass deportations and made verbal attacks on the trans community.
“No matter what happens at the national level, public schools will always be a priority in Berkeley, and we will stand firm to protect our most vulnerable students and families,” Corn said. “It will be vitally important for our board to immediately review and update our policies for protecting undocumented and transgender students.”
Likewise, Vasudeo said school board directors need to stand up for progressive values. “I’m excited to be re-elected and to continue fighting for our diverse students,” she said. “Our queer, trans, immigrant and undocumented students are going to need a lot of help, as you know, the political climate changes at the federal level.”
Berkeley’s five school board directors — who hold four-year terms and are tasked with setting policy and approving the budget of the school district — are elected at-large, not by district, meaning voters can cast votes for any of their top three candidates regardless of neighborhood. School board directors are not elected using ranked-choice voting, unlike some other city offices.
Trailing the race are Abdur Sikder, a computer science lecturer at San Francisco State University who unsuccessfully ran for office in 2018 and 2022, and perennial candidate Norma J.F. Harrison, a realtor and self-described communist.
Sixteen- and 17-year-old Berkeley residents were able to vote for school board director for the first time this year, with Berkeley and Oakland among the first in California to lower the voting age in school board elections.
But teens’ votes did not appear to be decisive in the outcome of the election.
According to Alameda County Registrar of Voters Tim Dupuis, 536 youth voters in Berkeley registered to vote in the election, and 328 mail-in youth ballots were returned. Vasudeo led Babitt by more than 3,600 votes overall in the most recent tally. Results for how youth specifically voted will be available after the vote is officially certified on Dec. 5, he said.
Nina Goldman, manager of the Berkeley Youth Equity Partnership, which helped Berkeley youth get registered to vote, said there were some hiccups this first year. The county only announced it had systems in place to allow youth voting this summer, so there was only a brief window to stand up a registration program.
Despite the small number of youth voters, it’s an important start, Goldman said.
“Studies that show that people who start voting young are more likely to vote down the road,” she said. “So we were trying to encourage lifelong voting.”
Annie Sciacca contributed reporting to this story.
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